Digital Social Hour
Brian David Suder: Why The Italian Mafia Hated His Rules (But Needed His Money) | DSH #1662
11 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: How did Brian David Suder become an ecstasy kingpin from a law enforcement family?
Part of my strategy was to eliminate my communication with the Mafia as well. And they would actually respect that further. Let me give you an example. They would go, Brian, you are invited with us to go to the Jersey Shore. Why aren't you joining us? And I would always respectfully decline. Because I felt like I'm never going to allow them to see this personal side of Brian.
So you kept it separate.
I want it completely separate. And then when you get into that, it opens up... playful talks, laughing, communicating, joking. And if you really look at my crew, I didn't laugh or joke with anybody.
Okay, guys, we got Brian David Souter here today. Crazy past. Now it's a legit entrepreneur, but we're going to dive into everything. First of all, thanks for coming on, man.
Of course. Thank you.
Yeah. A lot of the guys probably don't know you since you're first sharing your story now. So I think we should do a quick little summary of how you got here.
Sure. So back in the late 90s, early 2000s, I was an ecstasy drug lord, specifically in the area of Baltimore.
um it kind of fell upon me i was before that i was really big into fitness was grew up from like a legal background in terms of my family so my family my mother was a judge my father was an attorney my aunt was a federal prosecutor um later on i have two stepfather or stepfather and stepbrother they're cops and in ants they're attorneys as well so it's very heavily involved in in law enforcement the legal world the fact i worked at my mom's law firm since i was a kid
Some things happened in my life while I was in college that had, in fact, specifically my sister dying of cancer, family breaking up, me having the responsibility of, you know, paying for college. I did initially met them just kind of selling steroids.
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Chapter 2: What were the early interactions with the mafia that shaped his criminal enterprise?
We're going to dive into those principles. First, I just wanted to ask, because you just named a bunch of different mafias. What came to mind for me is why do you think the Italian mafia in specific gets so much attention compared to the other ones?
Well, I wrote something called the Romerto 2.0. And one of the biggest issues I talk about is emotion is a liability. So they're very cartoonish. They're very big characters. They get emotional. So that makes great script writing. Yeah. So you've got a lot of jokes, you've got a lot of violence, you've got a lot of mistakes that hit the headlines. So that's why.
Yeah, and they were all over the spotlight, which I know you didn't like, right?
Which, I mean, I would use going into Aramanta 2, I'd look at a lot of their mistakes. And as a result of that, you know, just pattern recognition, I implemented my system based on their mistakes.
Right. Yeah. So let's dive into Emerge 2.0. So you felt like you learned some stuff there, but you wanted to kind of amplify it, right? And create your own system.
Well, what it was, was this. I took the position very seriously. So they approached me multiple times. I was in a really kind of tight spot. My father left the family right after my sister dies. Do you know anything that when a family has a sibling that dies, a child that dies, that it destroys the family. It's just the dynamic changes.
So my dad just kind of made his way over to the Eastern shore of Maryland. My mom had a meltdown. I was living at home at that point because a lot of times it was basically a caretaker for my sister. She was dying of a cancer called neuroblastoma. So we expected her to live maybe a year. She lived for four, almost five years. Wow. So during that process, she died. It was a big thing.
My mom just said, get out. My dad left. I had no money. And the mafia just happened to be calling me nonstop because I have a good relationship with them. I had met them in around 1995. I was 19 years old. I bought a fake ID to go to bars with them. And I just built a trusting relationship. They knew I was big into fitness. They knew I was honest.
So I'd come back every Friday with a big stack of cash. So I built a very good reputation, not only on how I was a tough guy, I was also, you know, very big into, you know, organized street fights. We can get into that later. Just something I got into with martial arts. But they kind of respected me and they thought that I would be a great face person because of my reputation, my knowledge.
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Chapter 3: Why does the Italian mafia receive more attention than other crime groups?
So I'm friends with police. So I'm digging in. And I dug into their priority list, and it was very clear to me that if I were to get into a street fight or a bar fight, they don't care. They're like, our priority list, we're dealing with number one murder cities in the country. We're dealing with heroin epidemic. We're dealing with horrific crime in the communities in certain areas of Baltimore.
That's our priority. So if you beat somebody in a club, they still go home or go to jail. That's their rule. So I use that as an advantage. So if somebody happened to owe me money, which really rarely happened because of the way we enforce things, I could beat you up and not get in trouble and have an audience to look at what happens to you if you don't pay us.
So we utilize certain tactics like that that were effective in our game plan.
Yeah, that's very smart, honestly, because if you know what your opponent's thinking, you can kind of get around it, right? Yeah, completely. Yeah, you could apply that to business, too. You can.
I do still do this stuff.
I'm still a legal strategist to this day. I love that, man. I should have asked this earlier, but why'd you wait so long? Because you were living with this information for a while, so why'd you wait so long to start talking about it?
Okay, so a couple things. Early 2002, I actually got out. 2001, 2002. I ended up coming back in, okay? So I came back in and then ultimately retired around 2006. 2002, there's a situation where as I got into the game, and the other thing is I'm working at a law firm still while I'm in this game. So I'm looking at Nexus, Lexus. It was before the internet where you get like a CD disc.
You had to analyze the law.
uh the case law and see where really where ecstasy is so the first few years the first year or two was pretty much you're good you're not going to get in trouble um i would talk to police what are you guys doing with people with ecstasy they go we don't really have case law on the books right now just go ahead and we make them you know break it we make them stomp it out in the ground in front of us and that was like having weed that's how it was but later on
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Chapter 4: What are the core principles of Suder's Rometa 2.0 code?
His name is Keith Gladstone. He was the one guy that taught them how to steal from all these drug lords. Me and him got into it. They raided one of my houses without a subpoena. Wow. My mom got wind of it. I called her up. We ended up just paying them off. My mom is also, in many ways, it's hard to talk negative about your mom, but she is somewhat corrupt. That's just the makeup of that city.
It just is what it is, and she knows it.
um it's in the past you gotta get by retired but she's just the way that she operates you know she's very the way she operates is that's all i'm gonna say about um but um but yeah so he he did that but he would stay by paying him off he found one of my stash houses i had like six or seven of them and i and one of my mentors taught me always keep your eggs and never keep your eggs in the same basket so
Portiam had all cash, Portiam had drugs, and being a student, I would use that to my advantage. So I always had students that would put different stash houses in their names and then the drugs as well. Even where I would move, which we get into unpredictably as your ally, one of them, that served as well because I just move every six months. They never could keep up with me. But here's the point.
Keith called me up, and he said, listen, we just intercepted a call, okay? And the deal I put together with him is he takes my money, and he let me continue. It's the wildest story, and I'll maybe share it in a bit. But he sold my money. He allowed me to continue, but he said, but we're really going to come after these guys. You might want to stay away from them.
Well, I stayed away from them, and I just worked at this point, just shifted to the Persian mafia and the Russian mafia, which we can talk about later. But ultimately, working with them was a benefit. I ended up wanting to retire. He asked me, he goes, listen, when you finish your last exam, I'm going to hold off my team against you.
But once you finish that exam, my team's going to want to come back at you and get you. So you better just stop when you take your final exam in college because otherwise we're going to get you. Wow. So I stuck to that. I went out with a bang, which we could talk about in a second, moved to New York, ran into a faction of the Gambino family. There was almost a bloodbath there.
So I prompted me to go ahead and go to move to Los Angeles. So essentially when I got out, I was working with the Irish mafia, a guy named Tom Dixon. Now, Tom Dixon and Vincent Magliano were the two people that were running Baltimore. They were what we call the lords of Baltimore.
They were the drug lords of Baltimore in the 80s and 90s, supplying a majority of the cocaine to even the most dangerous neighborhoods of Baltimore, powder cocaine. They were the sources. Vincent Magliano, we talked about there later, was a son of Vincent Magliano Sr., who was a part of the the they call it the Baltimore crew.
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Chapter 5: How did he ensure the safety of his operations against law enforcement?
I was working with the Gambino faction that came in from Staten Island, a guy named Greg who got busted. Then he had a guy named Fred Caruso. His name I could put out there because he got in trouble. He was the contact for the DiCava contact family. Mm-hmm. So Vincent, even though we were friends, I grew up with them. I knew them my whole life. He was a prime example of the mafia not working.
Tommy Dixon was in many ways more close to no sure than Vinny. He would always take a meeting with a member, a family member of the Gambino family. His name is Anthony Gambino. He owned a restaurant called Ciao Bella in Little Italy. So he would go meet with him every Saturday night just to get – wisdom and knowledge of the culture. And a lot of my knowledge I got from him.
So my codes were a combination of my family upbringing, the legal thing. I'm always a strategist already. My Catholic upbringing. The mafia members are supposed to be Catholic. I never saw that part of them. And then I also took a lot of their mistakes, like thou shall not kill. It was very clear from the John Gotti era that killing was just a complete mess for them.
And I was not about to implement that. It's just not part of who I am anyway. And then you had other groups that came out. So you had a Persian family. So they had this one big artist named Shab. She's a Persian artist. You probably see her everywhere online. Her brother is Skadi or Shariar. And he's allowed me to share this. And I'm still good friends with him today.
The Persian Mafia was in a very incredible group. They were based out of D.C. He was originally from Baltimore. That's how I knew him. And he was supplying the entire club scene in D.C. So many members of the Persian community at that point were converting their restaurants into clubs and buying up clubs. They're very entrepreneurial.
They're very good businessmen, businesswomen, just business in general they're incredible at. So the supply they were able to do, and there's a lot of local colleges there, like University of Maryland's next door, et cetera. We were able to do a huge amount. And we worked together collectively. So when Scotty or Shariar was out, I would supply him. When I'm out, he would supply me.
And then later on, I ended up mentoring a Russian I saw a lot.
of uh you know i just saw a lot a lot in this guy and that was part of the part of my process was i was always willing to kind of take golden nuggets from different people and implement it from there and then i would also take my time to take on people i felt would be good with us as well yeah and that's the interesting thing about your stories you worked with all different ethnicities that didn't seem like you cared
no it didn't i mean it was just being my i mean with tommy at one point i was basically his underboss and constant consigliere it was how they call in the mafia world because i'm working on his behalf he had never had a guy like me work with him and and and a lot of my things that my principles he liked like one of my principles i put in here is obviously is never take a handout right and he was floored by that so like if you're in like a mafia situation you're always offered free stuff yeah
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Chapter 6: What strategies did Suder use to recruit and train his crew?
That's why when they talk about it, show it, portray it as the Sopranos, nah, the guy I dealt with was serious. No joke.
He wasn't Tony.
No, no. These guys don't mess around. So I've thrived on that. And all it did is push me to implement these codes better. All it did is further protected us and made me go put this thing. And that's why, of course, you can't use drugs. You've got to be on point every step of the way. 100%.
So you like the pressure.
I loved it.
Yeah, some people thrive under it.
I excelled.
It's interesting how some people just fold under pressure, but... Oh, it was just like... Guys like you love it.
How much can we make this better?
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Chapter 7: What led to Suder's decision to walk away from the mafia lifestyle?
They almost beat me up on that alone. And they had guns on us. And I was a business major, so I had everything hidden in my accounting homework. Yeah. So they couldn't find anything.
That's so smart.
It was like, I think it was widgets, you know?
That's so smart.
Yeah, so they couldn't find anything. And that's not going to be anything in my home. I don't do drugs. I don't have to find anything. They found one storage locker that I should have I didn't code it in my accounting yet. And they found it. They found that stash of cash. But for me, I'm operating on a federal level. Most of the local cops, they're not coming for me. These guys are feds.
So what am I worried about? Everybody says RICO. Well, RICO for drug lords is conspiracy. So my concern, there's some other things they could give you for the kingpin one too as well. But conspiracy, all you need is a couple people to testify against you. That's it? So I knew, yes, that's all they needed.
So I knew they had some people that could be testifying, but they're mostly on the state level. When I was selling hundreds at that point, I got my way while selling upwards of 50,000 at a time. So upwards more than that at a certain time. So So I was very concerned about a case. And that's why I really operated knowing that this industry had an expiration date. And the people I brought on,
I brought them on because I knew they were looking for a job. I knew they graduated from college. I said, this is a great opportunity to get some skills, make some money, and progress with your life. And that was the whole goal. And when I took my last exam and wanted to graduate from the industry, I did. But then I came back later on, which, if you want, we could get into later.
So you were always thinking pretty long term, though, with this.
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Chapter 8: How has Suder transformed his life into legitimate entrepreneurship after the mafia?
And here's the episode.